A new startup that spun out of Curas, the medical information technology company that specializes in electronic health records, is looking to tackle that market on its own.

Mi7, backed by $150,000 in private funding, will provide electronic health records services and consulting, focusing on lab device integration, system integration, and data extraction and migration for hospitals and medical practices.

“We’ve seen a big need from clients at Curas who were looking at other softwares or mobile solutions and wanting to use another system — that’s pretty much how we got started,” said Mi7 founder and President Brad Cassity, who previously served as a managing partner at Curas for nearly nine years. The Mi7 investors were individuals from Curas, which reported $2.8 million in revenue in 2012.

The company occupies a 1,200-square-foot office in Dardenne Prairie. Cassity projects first-year revenues of more than $500,000.

Cassity said roughly half of all new electronic medical records practices are looking to move from their current system.

“They’re looking to move systems and finding other EMR systems that can’t do what they originally thought,” he said. “Their needs are growing more sophisticated, so they are going to other applications.”

Such companies have become in-demand as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has gone into effect, forcing hospitals and practices to abide by new rules.

According to EquityNet, a crowdfunding platform for startups, ACA-related IT and health care startups are looking to raise a total of $14 million in funding, including services connected to insurance, electronic records, pharmacy, electronic monitoring, diagnostics, mobile, web platforms and social networks.

In St. Louis, venture capitalists invested a total of $19.1 million into seven health care IT startups in 2013, according to a report from BioEnterprise. That is down from 2012 ($57.2 million) and 2011 ($112.7 million), but the number of deals are up, which is a good sign for St. Louis’ pipeline of health care IT startups. According to Rock Health, a San Francisco-based group that advocates for health care technology, digital health funding topped $1.9 billion in 195 deals in 2013, up 39 percent from 2012 and 119 percent from 2011. Companies that work with electronic health records and pertinent applications were involved in most of those deals.